NYCPHP Meetup

[Ken Robinson]

At 08:00 PM 1/16/2008, B.A.S. wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>
>I'm trying to move from being a rank beginner to an intermediate 
>level of programming PHP. While practicing & trying to learn 
>something new every day, I'm also reading up on security (Essential 
>PHP Security by O'Reilly & Pro PHP Security by Apress).
>
>Unfortunately, I still have a really tough time trying to work out 
>the logic of what I want a script to do, and my code is pretty 
>primitive & verbose because of that (I have to painstakingly step 
>through each little bit of logic in order to wrap my head around anything).
>
>What I should be doing to get to the next level? Should I read up on 
>web application design? OOP? Just keep plugging away? What do you 
>guys use when working out the logic of an application you're 
>building? I'm guessing that would be some kind of flow chart?


I would join one of the on-line PHP related forums. I joined the 
PHPFreaks forum <http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php> 2.5 years 
ago and found it very helpful.


>What about IDEs? Because of my HTML coding & graphic design 
>background, I'm still using Dreamweaver--would I perhaps learn 
>faster or be more productive using Zend Studio (or even something 
>less expensive like phpDesigner)?

I've never used Dreamweaver, so I can't tell you anything pro or con. 
I've used TopStyle Pro, since it's very good at HTML, CSS, & PHP 
editing. I would also recommend installing a local copy of 
Apache/PHP/MySQL on your everyday computer, so you have a place to 
experiment. I use xampp <http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html> 
on my Windows XP laptop. I've been able to develop code on Windows 
and upload to my Linux host with no problems.


>Please forgive the numerous questions, but I'm 40+ years old and 
>want to approach this professionally, not just be some hack who 
>writes sloppy code for for beer & pizza money and doesn't care about 
>the client.

Questions are one of the best ways to learn. And don't worry about 
being older, I didn't start to learn PHP until I was almost 50 (47 or 
48 to be almost exact).

Ken